The Conduit review - PAGE 1

The Conduit brings players into the world of Michael Ford, a Secret Service agent tasked with saving the life of the President of the United States. After a mild briefing, the situation expands quickly and pulls players into an intense alien invasion with a mysterious power grab from an additional force turning normal soldiers into drones through use of experimental chemical agents in the air. As a result, the forces turn from just aliens to entire masses of the military and additional agents sweeping in via control of the mystery force. And from that, we get an impressive series of missions and challenges by players to try and save Washington D.C. (and even the world!) from potential decimation by this mysterious evil.

The Conduit is a game that focuses on being able to deliver a unique experience on the Wii. Players get to feel out a game developed intensely around the Wii Remote system with options for complete control of the cursor and movement while targetting the much neglected Core Audience of the system. For newer gamers, controller customization won't usually register as a must-have feature as the response often is dulled to a happy medium that anyone can adjust to. The Conduit tosses this mentality in the trash, and instead players can customize dead zone response, the speed of the remote and cursor sensitivity allowing for jump into the game at a speed or control they prefer. It's a unique gamble by HVS but if players actually respond well, it means that gamers can finally get some options in how they handle their FPS games through motion control from now on like being able to customize cursor speed for online play, and dead zone levels so that every whip of the controller is accurate and without waste.

A lot of innovation has been dumped into this game, so one would be hard pressed to say that the game doesn't cater to the core demographic. In our Q&A with HVS, the design team noted they actually had preliminary builds of Wii Motion Plus but they went forward with their own design system instead. Given the play handling from our review, their decision is not without merit.

Comments

Woah, nice review! A bit disappointed in some of the things mentioned in there, but I was quite impressed at the length (8-10 hours? Wow!). Adding in an online mode will just make you want to keep on playing as well.

I guess this one is well worth the money, haha. I'll probably go out and pick up a copy if I have the time.